Thank you for your email of 4th February to the Home Office Freedom of Information team. Please accept my apologies for the considerable delay in responding. This is due to an administrative oversight on our part.

For convenience, I have decided to consider your email as a general enquiry, rather than as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, since we do not hold any specific guidance on the question you have asked.

I can confirm that the phrase ‘centre of life’ does not occur within the UK’s domestic Immigration Rules and there is no equivalent phrase therein covering the same criteria. The ‘centre of life’ test is specific to regulation 9 of the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006. I previously released guidance to you on how we apply that test (in response to FOI request 30271).

I trust this has clarified matters and I apologise once again for the delay in responding to you.